Glasgow Urban Myths (4 page)

And the reason I took the time to tell you this story is to show you how if there’s ever anything really bothering you, you can do something about it. Just ring 0141 429 7987.

The wee old woman at the supermarket took her time pulling out of the parking space. I didn’t think she was ever going to leave. Finally her car began to move and she started to very slowly back out of the space. I backed up a little more to give her plenty of room to pull out.

All of a sudden this black BMW comes flying up in the wrong direction and pulls into the space I have been more or less patiently waiting for. I honked my horn and shouted, but the guy climbed out of his car completely ignoring me. He walked toward the supermarket doors as if he didn’t even hear me. I thought to myself, this guy’s a fuckin’ eejit.

I noticed he had a ‘For Sale’ sign in the back window of his car. I wrote down the number and found another place to park.

A couple of days later, I’m at home sitting at my desk. I had just got off the phone after ringing the number above and yelling, “Fuckin’ eejit!” (It’s really easy to phone him now since I have his number on speed dial.) I noticed the phone number of the man with the black Beamer lying on my desk and thought I’d ring him too.

After a couple of rings someone answered the phone and said, “Hello.” I said, “You the chap with the black BMW for sale?”

“Yes I am.”

“Can you tell me where I can see it?”

“Yes, I live in Bearsden, 17 Glasgow Road. It’s a yellow house and the car’s parked outside.”

I said, “What’s your name?”

“My name is Julian Dawson.”

“When’s a good time to catch you, Julian?”

“I’m at home most evenings.”

“Listen, Julian, can I tell you something?”

“Yes.”

“Julian, you’re a fuckin’ eejit!” And I slammed the phone down. After I hung up I added his number to my speed dialler.

For a while things seemed to be going better for me. Now when I had a problem I had two eejits to call. Then after several months of phoning the eejits and hanging up on them, the whole thing started to seem like an obligation. It just wasn’t as enjoyable as it used to be. I gave the problem some serious thought and came up with a solution.

First, I rang Eejit no.1.

A man answered, “Hello.”

I yelled “Fuckin’ eejit!” But I didn’t hang up.

The eejit said, “Are you still there?”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “Stop phoning me.” I said, “No.”

He said, “What’s your fuckin’ name, pal?”

I said, “Julian Dawson.”

“Where do you live?”

“Bearsden, 17 Glasgow Road. It’s a yellow house and my black BMW is parked out front.”

“I’m coming over right now.”

“Yeah, like I’m really feart. Fuckin’ eejit!” and I hung up.

Then I called Eejit no.2.

He answered, “Hello.”

I said, “Hello? Fuckin’ eejit!”

He said, “If I ever find out who you are …”

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll kick your fuckin’ arse!”

“Oh aye? You just wait right there. I’m coming over right now, eejit!”

Then I hung up.

Anybody notice an affray or some bad behaviour in Glasgow Road last July?

Maggie Stewart of Glasgow had a serious telephone problem. But, unlike most people, she did something about it.

The brand-new £10 million Bideawee Deluxe Hotel opened nearby and had acquired almost the same telephone number as Maggie.

From the moment the hotel opened, Maggie was besieged by calls not for her. Since she had had the same phone number for years, she felt that she had a case to persuade the hotel management to change its number.

Naturally, the management refused, claiming that it could not change its stationery.

BT weren’t helpful, either. A number was a number was a number, and just because a customer was getting someone else’s calls 24 hours a day didn’t make it responsible. After her plea fell on deaf ears, Maggie decided to take matters into her own hands. At 9 o’clock the phone rang. Someone from Glasgow was calling the hotel and asked for a room for the following Tuesday. Maggie said, “No bother. How many nights?”

A few hours later Edinburgh was on. A secretary wanted a suite with two bedrooms for a week. Emboldened, Maggie said the Sheridan Suite was available for £600 a night. The secretary said that she would take it and asked if the hotel wanted a deposit. “No, that won’t be necessary,” Maggie said. “We trust you.”

The next day was a busy one for Maggie. In the morning, she booked two funeral purveys and a 21
^st
, but her biggest challenge came in the afternoon when a mother called to book the ballroom for her daughter’s wedding in June.

Maggie assured the woman that it would be no problem and asked if she would be providing the flowers or did she want the hotel to take care of it. The mother said that she would prefer the hotel to handle the floral arrangements. Oh joy.

Within a few weeks, the Bideawee Deluxe was a nightmare. People kept showing up for rooms, weddings, funerals, and school reunion parties and were all told there were no such events.

Maggie had her final revenge when she read in the
Herald
’s Business section that the hotel might go bankrupt. Her phone rang, and an executive from Stakis said, “We’re prepared to offer you £200,000 for the hotel.”

Maggie replied. “We’ll take it, but only if you change the telephone number.”

A young man from Glasgow who wants his Mammy and is a wee bit slow, and an older man who is pretty quick.

A young man is shopping in a Glasgow supermarket when he notices that an older woman seems to be following him, staring at him in a sorrowful manner. He moves to the next aisle, trying to avoid her, but she follows, still staring.

And when he finishes shopping, he ends up behind her in a long queue. Her trolley is overflowing; his contains just a few items.

She keeps staring at him sadly, making him feel a bit freaked. Finally she speaks up. “I’m sorry about staring,” she says, “but you look exactly like my son, who died just two weeks ago.” And she begins to sniffle. “I mean, exactly like him,” she whispers.

Then, as the checkout girl processes her groceries, the woman asks: “As a favour to a grief-stricken mother, would you mind saying ‘Cheerio, Mammy’ to me as I leave? Somehow, it would make me feel so much better.”

The young guy gulps and agrees to her request. She gives him a tearful smile, waves, and walks quickly towards the car park with her head down.

“Cheerio, Mammy!” he says, waving back.

All the scene needs now to make it a perfect melodrama is violins welling up in the background, or maybe a little supermarket muzak.

The young man, reflecting on his good deed, feels such a warm glow of self-satisfaction that he barely notices the girl ringing up his own few purchases. Until, that is, the cashier tells him that the bill comes to £110.43.

“There must be a mistake,” the young man says, pointing at his single small bag.

The girl said, “Your mother said you’d be paying for hers too.”

Peter was back in Glasgow on a business trip and, after being out for dinner one evening, he decided to travel back to his hotel on the subway. He was just settling into his seat when he realised that his Rolex watch was missing.

On the platform stood a young man who was grinning at him and, reckoning that this was the thief, Peter leapt up and tried to get off the tube before the doors closed.

Unfortunately, he did not quite make it. Nevertheless, he managed to grab hold of the man’s lapels only to rip them clean off his suit as the subway moved away, and also managed to whang the no longer grinning young guy off the end of the tunnel as the subway car reached it. When he got back to his hotel the first thing he did was to phone the police and report the theft. Then he phoned his wife to tell her of the loss and what had happened.

“Jesus,” she said: “have you told anyone?” He said that he had been in touch with the polis. “Oh shit,” she said, “you left your watch behind on the dresser this morning.”

A couple returned early from a night out to find their teenage daughter having sex with her boyfriend on the couch. After the particularly awkward moments passed and the lad went home, the woman sat her daughter down for a “wee chat”. She got to the part about using protection and the girl said: “Don’t worry mum, I’ve been taking your birth control pills.” The woman asked her why she’d never noticed any missing and the daughter said, “I replace them with those wee aspirin Dad takes for his heart.”

More bad taste, including a drunk driver

A bungling thief tried to siphon diesel from a camper van but got a mouthful of raw sewage. The would-be raider missed the fuel tank in the dark and put a tube into the van’s septic tank by mistake. And after sucking up the foul-smelling waste, he threw up on the spot and fled.

Pensioner John O’Hare found a puddle of vomit and an abandoned petrol container when he stepped out of the van in the morning. And last night he smiled: “I hope the thief has learned from his experience and given up his evil ways.”

John, 73, and wife May, 69, of Arden, Glasgow had spent a week touring Scotland before stopping off for the final night of their holiday in Helensburgh.

John said: “We made sure everything was safe and secure and settled down for the night. The following morning we were disgusted to find that under the cover of darkness a thief had attempted to siphon off diesel from the fuel tank. But fortunately for us, he was left with a nasty taste in his mouth.”

John found a plastic siphon tube and an empty fuel container next to their camper.

The contents of the septic tank had been drained and lay on the ground next to a pool of the thief’s vomit. Also abandoned at the scene was a pile of pound coins which John believes may have been stolen from a vending machine earlier in the night.

John and May donated the abandoned pound coins to Oxfam.

John said: “We hope this thief will give up robbing visitors and tourists seeking a peaceful and pleasant holiday after what happened to him.”

“Given up his evil ways.” Some Glasgow punter said that? Aye, right. The above story appeared in one of our Glasgow-based red tops a couple of years ago. Apart from the names, which one presumes are real, this story has been on the go for at least twenty years. And how did the pound coins jump out of his pocket on to the ground? Never believe everything that you read in the papers.

A junkie was in desperate need of a fix. He was willing to do anything, including breaking into the house of an old woman whose son was a dealer. That night the junkie approached the house with a brick, planning on smashing in a window. To his amazement, the door was unlocked. He walked in, unaware that her funeral had been that day, and in no time found what he thought was the cocaine on the mantelpiece. The next morning, the son came home to find his mother’s cremation urn opened and the junkie asleep on the floor, with dusty remains on his shirt and face.

Joe goes to a party and has too much to drink. His friends plead with him to let them take him home. He says he only lives a mile away, in Milngavie. About five seconds after he has left the party the police pull him up, as he is all over the road, and ask him to get out of the car to be breathalysed. Just as he starts, the police radio blares out a notice of a burglary taking place in a house just a few yards down the street. The police tell Joe to stay where he is, they will be right back, and run down the street to the robbery.

Joe waits and waits for what seems ages and finally decides to drive home, which he does steadily, the shock of being nicked having sobered him up a tiny bit, though he is still totally banjaxed. When he gets there, he tells his wife he is going to bed, and to tell anyone who might come looking for him that he has got the flu and has been in bed all day.

Twenty minutes later the police knock on the door. They ask if Joe is there and his wife says yes. They ask to see him and she replies that he is in bed with the flu and has been so all day. The police have his licence. They ask to see his car and she asks why. They insist on seeing his car, so she takes them to the garage. She opens the door. There sitting in the garage, with all its lights still flashing, is the police car.

Think you’re smart, pal?

At Glasgow University during an examination one day, a bright young history student laid down his pen and asked his examiner to bring him a stoup of red wine.

Examiner: “Eh?”

Student: “I formally request that you bring me a stoup of red wine.”

Examiner: “Sorry, laddie, no red or any other coloured wine for you.”

Student: “Seriously, I really must insist. I request and require that you bring me a stoup of red wine.”

At this point, the student produced a copy of the foundation document of 1451, written partially in Latin and still nominally in effect, and pointed to the section which read (rough translation from the Latin): “Gentlemen sitting examinations may request and require a stoup of red wine.”

The examiners hemmed and hawed, and no one had any idea how much a stoup held, but nobody was getting on with their exams, and he said he would settle for a large glass of red wine. The exam recommenced, he was supplied with his stoup, and sat smugly slurping away, a minor master of beating the system.

The following day the university authorities fined him five Scots pounds for not wearing a sword. And nobody knew how much that was either.

A Glasgow gangster, Paddy Maguire, blags a considerable sum from his employers and takes off for the Costa del Plenty, where he goes to ground. No one can find him. This is because he is dead, and the going to ground is literal, as in into the ground. Do not steal from Glasgow gangsters.

He has, however, left a large chunk of this loot with his ever-loving wife, who is freaked out by the event and scared at the amount of the money. In her paranoia she spends huge amounts on security. No other house in Glasgow has this level of burglar and assault-proofedness. The gravel on the path is electrified. There are radars, sonars, automatic machine guns, landmines, guards. There are alarms on the alarms. This house is better protected than the Crown jewels.